Anthony DiComo's Mets MLBlog

Good Ollie, Bad Ollie, Minors Ollie?

For Oliver Perez, decision day has arrived. Until now, Perez’s refusal to accept a Minor League assignment was little more than a nuisance for the Mets — they wanted him to go down, but they did not necessarily need him to.

Now, they need him to.

If Perez does not accept a Minor League assignment before the Mets activate Jon Niese from the disabled list on Saturday, he will handicap the team in a new and troubling way. Rather than demote Perez, who is not being used in any high- or even medium-leverage situations, the Mets will have to option Jenrry Mejia, Ryota Igarashi or Raul Valdes to Triple-A Buffalo, or perhaps even designate Elmer Dessens for assignment. All of those pitchers are useful to the Mets. Perez, right now, is not.

The benefits of a Minor League assignment go beyond that, also. Unlike in New York, where Perez has little opportunity to pitch, a stint at Buffalo would allow him to start every five days and, in theory, improve. Perhaps, weeks or even months from now, the Mets could extract something useful from his $36 million contract.

Otherwise, the Mets will have to start thinking about eating the money and releasing him. And that helps no one at all.

Related

4 Comments

DL him for mental illness. He’ll at least have to get a psychological evaluation before he’ll be able to challenge his DL assignment. Khalil Greene was on the DL a long time for his anxiety disorder. It might just push Ollie into that trip to Buffalo or PSL for the rest of the year. I’ll bet he’d LOVE to have his mental health be the subject of public discussion!

Ollie is not a team player and accepting a minor league assignment does nothing for HIM. People can say it will allow him to improve but from his end, if he looks within and doesn’t think he CAN improve, then why go down? He runs the risk of going down and staying down. At least here he is a major league ‘player’ and gets to fly on team jets and stay in nice hotels without sharing a room. All on the Mets dime. If he goes down now and fails he seals his fate that no other team will ever take a shot at him (as crazy as it sounds, at league minimum, another team might give a 29 year old lefty who was once pretty decent a whirl).

Also, while I want Ollie off the team as much as anyone, Igarashi is not helping the team. He can’t throw strikes and has been terrible. He even said himself he is not comfortable. As for Valdes, I’m not sure what to make of him. Ever since he threw that 3 inning save he looks like he doesn’t care and his last couple outings have been atrocious. Did he hit some sort of strange incentive with that save and is now packing up camp for the year?

Meta

The following are trademarks or service marks of Major League Baseball entities and may be used only with permission of Major League Baseball Properties, Inc. or the relevant Major League Baseball entity: Major League, Major League Baseball, MLB, the silhouetted batter logo, World Series, National League, American League, Division Series, League Championship Series, All-Star Game, and the names, nicknames, logos, uniform designs, color combinations, and slogans designating the Major League Baseball clubs and entities, and their respective mascots, events and exhibitions.